Experienced print/online journalist specializing in health care. I have more than 28 years of experience writing and editing in major markets with feature and news clips ranging from an essay on my frugal father to how the Affordable Care Act affects your taxes.

Hundreds of thousands of Medicaid recipients in Illinois are being shifted into some kind of managed care this year as part of a sweeping overhaul intended to fix a program widely acknowledged to be broken.
Sherry Loveless can see the promise right through her bedroom door.

Taxing sugar-sweetened soft drinks at 20% would cut the number of obese adults in the United Kingdom by 180,000 (1.3%) and the numbers of overweight adults by 285,000 (0.9%), researchers report in a study published online October 31 in BMJ.

Physicians voted overwhelmingly to label obesity as a disease that requires a range of interventions to advance treatment and prevention.
However, there was impassioned debate in the hours before the vote here at the American Medical Association (AMA) 2013 Annual Meeting.

Despite controversial recommendations by a government-backed task force in 2009 to reduce the rate of mammograms, the numbers of women getting them regularly have not changed significantly, according to a study in the April 19 issue of Cancer.

Mt. Sinai is tossing out the MCAT requirement and changing course requirements in hopes of attracting medical students who are brilliant and passionate about medicine but may not do well on standardized tests.

Pharmacogenetic testing involves a swab or a blood or saliva sample sent to a lab that analyzes patients' DNA - specifically cytochrome P450, the enzymes that metabolize medication - to find out how they metabolize a certain drug. That can influence which drugs are prescribed and in what amounts.

With physician shortfall projections hovering at 63,000 by 2015, the promise of 32 million more Americans gaining health insurance, and a patient population rapidly aging, hospitals are scrambling to line up caregivers.
One strategy gaining momentum is the increasing use of NPs and PAs.

We didn't have air conditioning in our three-bedroom ranch house in Evansville, Ind., nestled right on the steamy banks of the Ohio River, which is not a problem unless you hope to be happy on any given day between May and September. We worked around it by having huge blue metal fans throughout the

Most Americans aren't even thinking about it, but the numbers say we should be.
While the costs and the means to pay for long-term care can be daunting to think about, the one thing that can put one's mind at ease is preparedness. In the infographic below, you'll get some of the facts about actua